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> Jeez, everybody is all bent out of shape on this. The Republican establishment hate Trump nearly as much as they hate Clinton so with Republicans controlling The House and The Senate how much "damage" is President Trump going to be able to do.

The Republican establishment, in terms of actual currently serving politicians rather than former ones or writers, have largely rolled over for Trump. With this "mandate", they'll continue to do so for fear of getting voted out.

And even if that weren't the case Trump would still be plenty dangerous. Sure, we can imagine they'd stop him if he tried to get some terrible policy passed -- but the biggest danger from Trump isn't some terrible deliberate policy. It's the constant screwups we can expect from someone who's not competent to run the executive branch.

Also I think it's likely that Trump's going to be a yes-man for whatever Paul Ryan passes.

Media bias? If anything, the media has been weirdly accommodating to Trump. Trump literally hides his tax returns and they just kind of go "Oh well, guess that's that," but they kept reporting on Clinton's emails ad nauseum no matter how many times it was established that there was nothing there. When Comey broke protocol and commented on her emails again a week ago, the story was not, "Look how the GOP is trying to rig this election with a false scandal," the front page stories were once again credulous acceptance that there was something fishy about Clinton. And when Comey once again failed to find anything, that was a much smaller story.

IMO the media's hunger to appease Trump is one of the most interesting contributors to this result.

I agree. There's a big lesson in focus here. One side hammered the emails incessantly while the other had too many issues to get the media to lock down on one.

I tend to think that this was the meeting of three things:

  - media driven by drama
  - individual operating how they always have, unlike the norm
  - a populace with many negative feelings, reacting to both

Part of it is also that Hillary's emails was pretty much handed to the media, with very little work required from their part. Digging into Trumps taxes or other scandals would require actual work.

As for Comey, he had a lose/lose scenario. If he didn't go forward with the new emails, and it had turned out that there was actually something worth investigating, he's would have kept important information from the US public, just before an election.

While Trump perhaps isn't exactly the ideal candidate for the US presidency, I have the same take on him as I did on the Brexit: The world is simply to boring a place for this to become a major issue. In the long run everything will be fine.

It's only been about a century since the Great Depression and the World Wars. I think it's a little early to say tragic outcomes are off the table now.

True, but it also a little to early to assume that Trump will turn the US into a 3. world country. Most of the things happing right now is due to people panicking about a future that is now perceived as more unstable, compared to if Hillary had won.

It's my belief that most of the short term problems that will arise from president elect Donald Trump is because people make wild speculations, and less because of his actions.

I can't believe that someone can come to the conclusion you just did. The media was overwhelmingly anti-Trump, that shouldn't even be in dispute. He may have "won" a few talking points that the media was forced to report on as you indicated, but to say the media was accommodating to Trump is just fantasy.

The people in the media were overwhelmingly anti-Trump, no argument. But the media's coverage of the election was not anti-Trump any more than reporting objective facts in the face of Trump's lies can be called "anti-Trump." They reported on Hillary like any other candidate, but they walked on eggshells around Trump, trying and failing to find a way to report on somebody they despised — and who constantly accused them of conspiring against him — without appearing partial. For example, there were way more stories about the how sketchy the Clinton Foundation was than the Trump Foundation, even though the latter has factually violated the law and the former has not.

I feel they were biased in another, more insidious way (and they went along with it). Trump has carefully crafter a persona for himself over the years (perhaps even accidentally, by virtue of his personality), where he can pretty much say anything (and especially things no other candidate would ever be able to say without saying goodbye to any chance at election), and the media (and people) will just go "oh, well, sure he said some racist, sexist things, but that's just Trump... you know how he is". Kind of like that racist uncle at the dinner table... you gotta put up with it, but at least he's family, so you understand him better, and perhaps realize he has other redeeming qualities.

So, this has allowed Trump to appeal to bases of people no other candidate could even hope to reach, with the current "acceptable" rhetoric.

>they just kind of go "Oh well, guess that's that,"

Because this is what the media does for damn near every political scandal that politicians don't immediately capitulate to. Weathering the storm of news, attention and publicity to a "scandal" when a story hits is how it becomes a non-story next week.

>they kept reporting on Clinton's emails ad nauseum no matter how many times it was established that there was nothing there

Because there were incremental changes and updates, the media gets to milk the story for every new morsel. Also, a sleazy, immoral and poorly implemented system for attempting to avoid (even without breaking) open records laws is not "nothing."

IMO the media's hunger to appease Trump

The media's actions are better explained as both lazy and desperate for reader/viewer attention. It explains everything they do from coverage of Trump and Hillary all the way to coverage of the Scout Bake Sale.

Trump literally hides his tax returns and they just kind of go "we're going to break federal law to publish them"

> how much "damage" is President Trump going to be able to do.

His rhetoric is already escalating the "war on Muslims". Electing him further confirms that Americans are the enemy of Islam. This is exactly what terrorists were trying to accomplish, and I think we can expect many more people to become radicalized. We can expect an increase in terrorist attacks. Walls won't save you. Tighter immigration control won't save you. The damage was done today, and in the months leading up to the election. I am legitimately scared to visit countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia. I was already scared about Turkey, and the situation there will only get worse. I'm worried for my relatives and friends who live there.

Donald Trump doesn't trust the science behind climate change. He doesn't believe that it's real. He would like to dismantle the EPA and increase our dependence on coal and oil. Even if I ignore his deep character flaws, business failures, and sexual assault accusations, this single issue is a dealbreaker for me. Luckily we have many other people working on clean energy, like everything that Elon Musk is doing. But how can this be coming from the President of the United States?

People say that Donald Trump is a smart man. Smart people don't say things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU2p6YakNJg

Smart people escalate the war in the middle east like Hillary?

I'm not a smart person either, especially when it comes to solving all of the problems in the middle east. I'm honestly quite uninformed, apart from all the media coverage and mudslinging. Could you recommend some books that I should read?

That's apples and oranges. On one hand, you have the actions of one person, as part of a team, handed an urgent situation of their predecessor's making. On the other, you have clearly demarcated policy positions, being declared in advance, by someone whom we should fully intends to execute them.

I honestly cannot figure out which candidate should match which description.

As far as I remember in last 30 years wars in Middle east has escalated chiefly by republicans (Bush gang).

I'm very worried about preemptive announcements of how his presidency will fail. That's the sort of thing that makes people resent "elites" in the first place! I think that the best thing is for the liberals to marshal their political support while saying they'll consider bills trump proposes. Keep all the leverage they can while not signaling that they'll be out to sabotage trump. Saboteur government, like with the republicans under Obama, didn't work, and I hope the Democrats doesn't try it.

When it comes to radicalization, I would be much more worried over the long-term use of drone bombers. Some people have already incorporated drones into local lore (if you don't behave, a drone will get you), and from myth and lore it is a short step to define the operators as evil and create rhetoric that is used by radicalization. We saw a similar effect in art when England was under constant bombing during ww2. Several years of bombing can cause a rather radical effect on peoples mind, and I suspect studies on stress can confirm that. The wrong president being elected on the opposite side of the planet seems minor in comparison.

The climate aspect is indeed bad, even if many of the trade deals that trump oppose and Hillary was active in bringing forth was labeled as negative for the climate. Hillary was likely the lesser evil all in all, but hopefully in 4 years we can see an actually advocate for the environment and clean energy.

>> "Walls won't save you"

Americans refuse to live in fear (at least, the block of Americans I understand and am part of). We don't really count on walls to save us. We count on the ability to destroy those who want to murder us.

That will probably freak a lot of people out here. I'm not a warmonger. But we are a strong nation, and those who want to kill our innocent civilians need to know, America will not cower.

Terrorism is on the rise because there are large groups of people who have devoted their lives to barbaric murder of innocents -- some on the front lines with bombs strapped on, others through financial and cultural support.

These groups of people have a culture in favor of anti-US terrorism. Note: I have not named the groups. You can't say "Islam", because many Muslims don't feel that way. You can't say "Arabs" because it is likewise inaccurate.

It's hard to name the group with a precise enough term. But they exist, and their culture makes them our blood enemies. They want to murder us, and therefore I want to murder them.

What really needs to die is the barbaric culture. But how do you kill a culture? (I can only think of one example off the top of my head ... atom bombs on Japan seemed to quickly, drastically change their culture. Hopefully there's a less drastic way).

Tolerance and peace are some of the greatest human ideals. But when someone desires with their whole heart to murder you and all that you love, tolerance is the wrong response. That enemy needs to be recognized, understood, and defeated.

> Americans refuse to live in fear (at least, the block of Americans I understand and am part of).

I agree. I wish, though, that political commentators would act like good StarCraft 2 casters and tack on the obligatory "But at what cost?"

Either locally: I'd rather not give up some freedoms (e.g. stop & frisk) on the off-chance some crimes are prevented or internationally: I'd prefer less drone strikes with collateral damage, despite the value of a killing a dangerous terrorist.

I have hope that Trump will back into some good results via his isolationism. I believe that the less buddy-buddy the US is with the Saudi royals, the less animosity we'll generate, making us less likely to be targets.

For one Trump will give them at least one, more likely two even more Supreme Court Justices, so some of the most right-wing conservatives we've seen in the past half century will decide the law of the land for the next twenty to thirty years.

The Republicans will have control of all three branches of government for the next few years and there is a whole lot that they can do with that. As a foreigner, what worries me most is that American progress on climate change policy will be set back by another 15 to 20 years as Obama's progress will be erased and there is no progress to hope for until another Democrat is elected in four or eight years. Russia can also be expected to threaten Europe with more confidence; hopefully our defense spending will increase to pick up the slack.

The Democrats certainly brought this upon themselves. People say the primaries against Sanders were rigged, but really the problem wasn't that the DNC pushed Clinton. The problem was Clinton herself. Clinton soundly rejected Sanders' populist ideals when almost half of the party and a great number of independents supported them. All it took at that point were a few leaks and a letter from Comey to rip the blue collar worker's vote from her.

At the DNC it seemed like she had adopted many of Sanders' ideals as part of her platform. Did that change at some point afterward?

In what sense? She didn't budge on the $15 minimum wage, universal healthcare nor free education. Those were some of Sanders' key issues.

She understandably also stayed away from some more controversial issues like marijuana legalization and NSA surveillance.

Where she actually flipped her position on issues, she did so without drawing any attention to it, as if to be able to flop back quietly after the election. On paper, she opposed the TPP, but it's no more than a bullet on her website. I don't recall one bad word she said about trade agreements or even "just" TPP, which she had already sacrificed. Trump and Sanders could give entire speeches on the subject.

Can we stop with the 'Clinton rejected sanders policies' line? She pretty much accepted most of them. Bernie supporters are idiots for not getting behind her. You reap what you sow.

Publicly she may have done so, but privately the Podesta emails show them joking about pretending to adopt Sander's positions during the primaries.

But yes, Bernie supporters are such idiots for not getting behind a deeply corrupt person who would have been rightfully impeached within 6 months, if elected. How could you not love a candidate who runs a fake charity, has ties to child sex trafficking, and cheated throughout the entire process?

Or Clinton supporters were idiots not to back Bernie, you reap what you sow.

> reap what you sow.

Yes, and the DNC is now reaping what they sowed with their arrogant, condescending, and entitled campaign strategy of railroading through the least likeable and most corrupt Democratic candidate in living memory.

That's great. But she was still the nominee and they had two choices. They got one of them. If they didn't want him and didn't vote for her, then they're fucking idiots.

Re: Russia can also be expected to threaten Europe with more confidence; hopefully our defense spending will increase to pick up the slack.

Any real threats to Europe will lead to nuclear conflict. It's not 1910 - you don't need to be afraid of rifles and spending money on tanks.

You can say - but the Ukraine! - well, it's not European country, and it has no valuable partners that deeply invested and pledged to protect it.

I'd completely forgotten about Scott Adams. Now we're never going to hear the end of it.

But I seriously question the idea that Trump can't do much damage because of the Republican controlled House and Senate. The Republicans have been quite eager to do damage to the US without Trump.

> how much "damage" is President Trump going to be able to do

Probably a lot less than people think domestically -- I suspect he's going to find his hands tied nearly as much as Obama. (And the outbursts of frustration we're likely to see from him as result will probably be epic.) Foreign relations are going to be interesting for a while though, and the stock market is probably going to crash, if it hasn't already.

> I suspect he's going to find his hands tied nearly as much as Obama.

Yeah no, he can just give free reign to Pence (as he explicitly said he'd do) and establishment GOP and they'll let him have his pet hates. Obama was "the enemy" and opposed at every turn, Trump just has to give the GOP their Supreme Court nominee and they'll be more than happy to indulge him.

Maybe. You're right that it's very possible that we are effectively getting President Pence with Trump as his spokesman. Trump and Pence did seem to disagree on a bunch of things though when the debates were going on, so I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens.

If Trump does try to actually do anything drastic, I think he will find his hands tied though.

Personally, I hope the silver lining may be that through these almost inevitable outbursts, the public will get a bit of a "peek behind the curtain" of how politics in the US (and the world at large) actually work. That's a tall order though, since Trump is more likely to just simplify everything to "me wants to do good, he try stop me, he bad!"

I think the biggest amount of direct influence the president has is on foreign policy.

There's a lot of damage to be done there.

Also, he has shown that he can make the Republicans shut up and follow. Quite easily.

The "problem" that made them fall in line won't go away. The voters will stick with him for a while.

I have been following his blog for about 6 months because it seemed like he was a pretty rational and lucid trump supporter.

I have a newfound respect for him because he literally called every step of this election.

It is amazing that all the news organizations which are supposedly representing opposing views all lined up against him. You'd think if he was really a monster we'd know by now. Donald Trump is 70 years old, after all.

Well, I don't know if a "real monster", but if pandering to (and propagating conspiracy theories from) the alt-right doesn't tickle you as a bit bothersome, you might be part of the problem.

We do know, and we always have. He's a conman, always been.

It's a long established fact that an appeal to emotion as opposed to rational argument or character, is a far stronger form of persuasion. I think a lot of people overlooked this in this election.

Sure, people will justify their support either through reasoning or judgement of character - "He's a racist bigot", "She's part of the establishment", his/her policy is better etc. but what it comes down to is the emotional appeal of the arguments.

I think Donald Trump was more successful at rallying people around his promise to "make America great again" whilst Hillary failed to rally people around the idea of "Stronger together". I think her campaign became preoccupied with attacking the character of Donald Trump, seeing this as his weakness, as opposed to founding it on a strong appeal to emotion. I would argue the Sanders campaign was much stronger in this regard.

Maybe the domestic damage will be limited, given the checks and balances the three branches provide. As much flak as congress gets, it's interesting to see that no one part of the government is all powerful.

But foreign policy and diplomacy falls squarely in the executive branch. It's impossible to separate the US election from the rest of the world, when the US is so incredibly influential. Diplomacy is tricky, time consuming, and can fall flat on the stupidest little things. Even a really good secretary of state backed by a strong state department can only do so much with an elephant in the china shop.

Like Brexit, it remains to be seen what will actually happen, but if the campaign is any indication of future performance I won't hold my breath.

I've been thinking about this too. He might have no no history in government, but the years of selling himself and his name have made him damn near the perfect politician.

I'm waiting for the I TOLD YOU SO post on his blog any second now. (It's up and replete with smug gloating)

> reading Scott Adams blog

Yeah, that was interesting. You did, I did. I tossed in here one of his better pieces over 3 months ago. Flagged off, of course. "La-la-la, not listening ..."

You have no clue. This is really serious shit, the genies he let out of the bottle during the election will not go back in just as victory has come into their grasp.

> Jeez, everybody is all bent out of shape on this. The Republican establishment hate Trump nearly as much as they hate Clinton so with Republicans controlling The House and The Senate how much "damage" is President Trump going to be able to do.

The President deals with foreign policy, and Trump is in Putin's pocket. Time for Ukraine and the Baltic states to become part of Russia.